Fangirl
by Missmishka
Summary: Obligatory OFC series. Daryl rescues a vulnerable young girl from a Walker threat. Carol watches their relationship grow and takes the teenager under her wing, finding her anything but vulnerable. A/U post-Pretty Much Dead Already timeline. Chap 10/12 UP
1. Chapter 1

For Alamo Girl. I meant this to be a parody, but my muses actually took the topic quite seriously...

_**Fangirl, by MissMishka**_

DISCLAIMER: The usual warnings, I claim no ownership of these characters, they are simply borrowed with love and adoration from the original creators to have their stories embellished on a little more than the show may do. Not for any profit.

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><p>Daryl wasn't alone when he returned to the camp, but Carol could easily tell that he wished he had been.<p>

The girl trailed after him like a shadow, making no move to cover herself with the worn plaid shirt torn open across her flat chest. She carried a bloody machete in one hand and a shotgun in the other, obviously well versed in survival and capable of managing on her own, but the evidence of Daryl having saved her from something was clear.

He stalked past Carol and the rest of the group to his tent, which he ducked into and zipped up quickly behind him. The girl followed, going so far as to grasp the zipper tab on the flap and tug before his voice snapped out a loud, "Go 'way!"

Carol watched the child deflate at his order, but it was only for an instant. She rebounded with the resilience of youth and began to argue with him through the canvas.

"You can't just plunk me down in the middle of all these strangers."

"They're no stranger than I am!"

"How can I trust _them_ not to be some kind of freaks that'll violate my nubile young body?"

"No one wants your body!"

Carol has to bite her cheek to keep from laughing at that unexpected byplay and she has to wonder what exactly had happened on his hunt that morning.

"You don't know that," the girl said, eyes genuinely apprehensive as she turned to look over the group assembling to watch the show.

Before he can reply, the mother in Carol responds to the girl's fear and she steps forward slowly with the blanket she had been folding from the clothesline.

"No one here would think of hurting you," she assures the stranger, draping the cover over the tiny figure.

"And I'm just supposed to take _your_ word for it, grandma?"

Her brow rises sharply at that insult and she abruptly drops the material around the girl.

The child immediately shrugs the blanket off and climbs to her feet. She pokes her head through the strap of her gun to sling the weapon across her back along with the heavily loaded backpack she wore then raises the machete toward them all.

"I'll be keeping an eye on you," she warns them, eyes sweeping each member of the group with the tip of the blade pointing to each of them in a clear threat.

"We get it," Andrea scoffs, expressing the humor they all felt at the posturing, "you're a real hardass."

"When's the last time you ate?" Lori steps forward to ask, paying no attention to the weapon the girl turns on her.

Carol would have fussed in a similar fashion, but 'grandma' figured the little brat really could fend for herself. As their guest was corralled toward the campfire where some of lunch still remained, she bent to pick up the discarded blanket and shake off the dirt and twigs.

"She gone?"

The question stops her mid-shake and she lowers the blanket to find Daryl peering from his tent, the zipper opened just enough for her to see him looking out.

"Rough morning?" she can't help but grin as the question begs an answer.

His eye glares at her through the opening and he doesn't answer her as he zips the flap back up and proceeds to have some kind of tantrum in the tent that sets the shelter to rocking.

Somehow, she can imagine him throwing off his boots and kicking around his things in the cramped space to vent whatever feeling he couldn't express otherwise.

She shook her head, folded the blanket and buried her smiling face in the material before turning away.

Over the next few days they slowly learn that the girl's name is Cassandra Davies; Cassie if you didn't want an evil eye of imminent death aimed upon you. She was fifteen and from a town about fifty miles away. Her family; parents, brother, aunt and two uncles, had begun the journey to this point, but only she remained.

"They even ate the dog," Cassie had confessed tearfully that first night, attempting to snuggle under Daryl's arm with the softly spoken words.

The man had frozen, paralyzed with not wanting her snuggling up to him, but also not wanting to be such an asshole as to reject her if she truly needed comforting.

The pair gave the group endless hours of entertainment.

Cassie milked it, using the group's enjoyment of how she made Daryl squirm as an excuse to do it all the more.

Daryl sharpened his buck knife with gritted teeth, a tick in his cheek and a glare in his eyes that warned them that if they kept it up they'd wake up skinned one of these days.

No one took the glare seriously, but Carol found him all the cuter for trying.

She found herself watching him with the child and wondering how he would have handled Sophia had her daughter been found alive.

Would he have shown her how to whittle as he did Cassie around the campfire at night?

Would he have worn that same pained expression that he did when Cassie talked his ear off over something if Sophia had found a topic to discuss with the man?

They had had no real time together, this man and her child, but he had still risked his life to try finding her. She imagined there would have been no end to the things he would have done to see Sophia safe and secure had such a miracle been possible.

Watching him with Cassie hurt. He was so awkward with the child, but forced to _try_ because the girl refused to let him run from her. The only times she allowed him from her sight were when he slept and went off to relieve himself.

Carol knew for a fact that the little imp had refused to give the man privacy for a bath and she'd been tempted to spank the girl for that, because Daryl so rarely _wanted_ to bathe. Since he'd caught the girl spying on him from the riverbank, though, he was clearly afraid to even try getting naked anywhere ever again.

And Carol knew of this because she had followed him, too, that day, hoping for a moment of privacy to talk.

As the days with Cassie among them turned to weeks, the opportunity to be alone with Daryl became even rarer and Carol began to realize that she might have it just as bad as the teenager.

She knew how Cassie watched Daryl because the girl kept getting in her line of sight when _she _looked to him.

She knew how much time the child spent trailing him because she was there every dang time Carol went looking for his company.

He made every effort to hide from the girl without hurting her feelings, but Carol was certain his gentle attempts only endeared him further to the child. Carol knew it touched her as much as it amused her to see him awkwardly struggle to handle Cassie's devotion.

But it was wearing thin and Carol was ready to step in.

She missed him and the girl simply had to be made to realize that she had no right to monopolize Daryl.

The opportunity for a little girl talk presented itself rather unexpectedly one afternoon and Carol leapt on the chance.

Cassie was sitting by herself on the edge of the camp. She was whittling the ends of sticks into sharp points with vicious cuts of her razor-sharp butterfly knife and every so often, her dark head would rise for her green eyes to glare daggers at something in the woods nearby.

As Carol carefully approached the girl's hunched figure, she squinted in the same direction to see what had earned the child's wrath.

She felt a scowl crimp her own features as she saw it.

Daryl and Andrea were gathering firewood, smiling at one another over an obviously private joke about poison ivy.

"Could she be more obvious?" Cassie groused chopping at another stick as Carol sat down beside her.

Not exactly sure what to say now that she had the chance, Carol remains silent, eyes remaining locked against her will on the pair in the woods.

"Everyone knows she's sleeping with Shane," the girl continued. "Just because she's all smart and pretty and frickin' blonde doesn't mean she has to have _every_ guy left."

"They're just friends," Carol said, mostly sincere as she turns her attention to the girl beside her.

"He doesn't need any more friends," Cassie argues. "Especially a blonde. Blondes are so stupid. Back in school I had one boyfriend and I only wanted him. Eddie Thomas. He sat in front of me in Mrs. Miller's science class and he was soooooooo cute and he would always turn around and flirt with me. We'd just started hanging out at the mall together and I _know_ he was going to ask me to the Sweetheart's Dance when stupid Suzy Allen threw herself at him. Flipped her lil blonde ponytail and shook her ass-"

"Language!" Carol interrupts eyes wide at hearing anything profane from a young lady.

Cassie stops sharpening the twig in her hands and tilts her head to the side to stare at Carol in disbelief.

"Seriously? The world's gone tits up like a drowned stripper and you object to my saying ass?"

"You are spending far too much time with Mr. Dixon," Carol shook her head to hide her grin, hearing the man's snark channelled through the girl's comment.

"Daryl's cool," Cassie defends. "And I was cussing long before he came along. He tries to keep what he says around Carl and I all mild, like we've never heard "shit" or "fuck" before and he says some of the weirdest things trying not to use the 'bad' words. Like I'm some kind of kid or something."

"You are, Cassie," Carol reminds the girl softly. "To him, to us, you're still so young."

"I'll be sixteen before too long," the teenager scowls at her.

"And he'll be forty."

"Huh?"

"Forty," Carol gently begins to break the girl's little fantasy with a dose of reality. "He's a grown man, Cassandra."

"No way," the girl gives her the evil eye for the use of her full name. "You, sure. You might be forty. Dale? Probably like eighty. But Daryl? He's like…young."

"Go ask him yourself if you don't believe me," Carol challenged with a wave toward the man under discussion.

The girl turns to stare at the pair making their way to camp with arms full of fallen pieces of wood. For a few minutes they're quiet as they watch the man in motion.

"You like him, too, huh?" Cassie says, her eyes moving suddenly to catch Carol admiring the shift of muscle under skin glistening with sweat as Daryl deposits his bundle near the fire ring.

She doesn't respond to the question, not really knowing how to answer except to say that 'like' didn't really cut it.

"He saved me. I … I was done for," the girl said, her eyes going lost and unseeing of the present as she spoke for the first time about the day Daryl had found her. "We'd been losing people the whole time, but dad and I had been holding on pretty good. You could almost forget how bad things are as long as you have some family left with you, you know? But this stupid body on the ground was one of _them_ and we didn't know. We were just walking over it and it bit him. Got his ankle right above his shoe. Such a stupid way to get it, you know?"

A tear slides down her face and the youth of that profile tears at Carol.

How many other children were out there, left to survive in this land alone?

The idea of this girl ending up like Sophia made her chest ache and she's glad Daryl was able to find at least one alive. Maybe there would be more he could save.

"I killed that fucker," Cassie sniffles and swipes the tear away angrily. "Cut its head to pieces. Too late, though. We got in a car for the night and he stayed with me for most of it. We just stayed up and talked until the fever made him all weird and I couldn't understand him anymore. I fell asleep when he stopped breathing and woke up when I heard him start again. That sound they make…" a shudder goes through the hunched figure as they both easily imagine that rasping wheeze the Walker's do with their useless lungs.

"I was trapped with him. He'd been in the backseat and I was upfront and he just lunged toward me and I swear I was a goner. I was kind of ready for it."

The girl said it so shamefully that Carol wanted to confess to how she had been in that same place herself. Instead, she just places a gentle hand on Cassie's back and gives it a gentle rub.

A sob shook through that back and the child spun around to throw herself against Carol's chest and cry.

Tears gathered in her own eyes and began to flow quietly down her cheeks as she held and rocked the girl. She sees Daryl watching them now, his expression questioning, his body tense as he stood helpless on the sideline of their grief.

"He saved me," Cassie kept saying, needlessly justifying the way she had clung to Daryl since the day he had entered her life.

"I know," Carol, strokes the girl's hair and places a kiss on her temple. "He saved me, too."

They fell quiet after that, until Carol began to wonder if she had put the girl to sleep with her rocking. When she pulled back to check, though, Cassie drew herself upright and gave a decisively final sniffle as she wiped at the evidence of her tears.

With the tears drying between them, the silence grew awkward and Cassie scooted away to look around the camp. She once more demonstrated the resilience of her youth by shaking off the emotion of the past few moments like the memories of such loss had never touched her.

"So," she said, focusing on something near the RV, "Glenn's pretty young, right?"


	2. Chapter 2

Carol imagines she should feel bad for inadvertently siccing the girl upon Glenn, but in her own defense she couldn't have known that Cassie would jump from crush to crush like that.

She pushes to her feet, brushing at the seat of her pants as her eyes follow the teenager's bouncy step through the camp.

Daryl looks panicked as Cassie's path nears him and his eyes dart around seeking an escape route or task to excuse himself from her attention. Carol chuckles softly as he finds nothing and braces himself, as if for a blow, when the girl nears him.

When Cassie continues past him with nothing more than a smile, he rears back and watches her suspiciously as she walks away.

Smiling fondly, Carol moves toward the man to join him in watching as a startled Glenn jumps up like a scalded cat when the girl suddenly plops herself down right beside him. The Korean had been hunched thoughtfully over the guitar that he had taken to clinging to when he had something he needed to work through in his head. Cassie gave no indication of noticing his reaction, though, as she snags the guitar from his grasp and settles it skillfully against her chest.

_Of course she plays guitar,_ Carol thinks, both marveling and disbelieving at the child's endless surprises.

Cassie's slender fingers drift slow and gently across the strings of the instrument. Her young face is focused and thoughtful as she listens to the sound each pluck makes and she pauses to tune it a few times, tweaking the pegs until the strings were to her liking.

Glenn watches the process with growing fascination, slowly recovering from his shock at her sudden attention.

She senses Daryl's confusion growing and turns to him with a brief, reassuring smile before refocusing on Cassie to see what the girl would have to play for them.

After the gentle strumming that eventually drew the whole group together to attend the impromptu concert, the girl paused in the midst of their attention. Her green eyes focus on Daryl, narrowing slightly as she took in the way his shoulder came so close to brushing Carol's with the way they stood together, neither feeling their personal space invaded by such nearness from the other. Cassie flick an eye to Carol, arches her brow in a sly look well beyond her age then she grins at the woman and picks up the pace of her fingers on the guitar. Her voice is clear and pitch perfect as it begins to accompany her playing, a twang invading her tone that had never been present in her speaking.

"That just ain't right," Daryl snorts, shaking his head as the girl begins singing of giving up on love and soaking things in kerosene.

Carol can understand why the man might be concerned with the underlying theme of the song Cassie had chosen. She would have expected something a little more bubble gum pop like Sophia had always come home from school humming until Ed had shushed her for the noise. Still, the attitude of this selection seemed rather fitting, even though she felt the lyrics to be far too old for Cassie to really understand.

As the song runs to its end, the gathering applauds and Cassie blushes as if she had really had no idea the whole group had come out to listen to her. Carol is a little skeptical on the likelihood of that, but she still adds her applause to the others, appreciating the distraction as they all had.

Glenn was enraptured by the display and had sunken back to sit on the fallen tree beside the girl.

"I can teach you some," Cassie said, all innocence and hesitation, which Carol knew good and well to be baloney. "So you can maybe play it when you're toting it around like you do."

The young man fell for it; hook, line and sinker and Carol marveled at such skill in the youngster. While she knew the show was far from over as Glenn moved in to take his first guitar lesson from the girl, Carol still turned from them to give her attention to Daryl.

"What's, uh," he says, wagging his finger at the pair, "what's all that about?"

"I think your shadow is finally up to branching out," Carol smiles toward the dark heads bent over the wooden instrument.

His eyes narrow as he watches Cassie flick her long auburn hair over her shoulder to leave the line of her slender throat bare to the oblivious Korean who was focused intently on the placement of his fingers on the neck of the guitar.

"How the hell'd you manage that?"

"We talked," she shrugs, beginning to move away from the group to the privacy of some trees nearby.

"Hell, you think _I_ didn't try _that_, too?"

Smiling at his having followed as she had intended, she feigns thoughtfulness as she picks out a tree to lean back against.

"She just needed some girltalk to put it in perspective," she tips her head back and to the side as he props his shoulder against the same trunk she rests her back on.

He seems unaware of how close they are in the position, but Carol feels her pulse flutter at the nearness.

"That shit really work?" his eyes meet hers thoughtfully.

"Only time will tell," she gives him a crooked grin and slight shrug of her shoulder.

He seems to really see her then, eyes flicking to hers then almost instantly away to jump aimlessly around them. When he finds nothing else worthy of his focus, his gaze slowly tracks back to her and settles on the neck and shoulder she had skillfully bared with her shrug.

"So what'd you talk about?"

"It's like a confessional, Daryl," she chides him, turning to prop her shoulder against the tree and put herself closer to him. "What was said was said in a confidence I can't betray."

"How do you know it worked?"

"Trust me," Carol smiles, placing a reassuring hand on his arm.

He starts, almost instinctively at the touch, but only stares at the hand as she grows confident and allows it to stroke his skin.

"Been awhile since we shared a confidence," he says softly, eyes flicking up from the sight of her hand upon him.

"I know," _boy did she ever._

"You been crying," he lifts his hand for his fingers to stroke at the tracks of her tears. "You ok?"

Gratified by his concern, she leans forward to press her face against his shoulder while she nods. Pushed aside by her move, his hand hovers in the air for a moment before dropping to her shoulder and sliding down to rest on the small of her back.

She wallows in the moment, absorbing the press of his body so close to her own and the weight of that hand in such intimate proximity. When she tilts her head back, hoping for a kiss to commemorate the private exchange, he looks down into her expectant face and licks nervously at his lips.

"Supper's ready," an all too familiar voice breaks into the moment, causing them to jump apart.

They turn to find Cassie standing just a few feet away, left hand propped on her hip while the right one tapped quietly against her denim covered thigh. Her eyes are narrowed as she stares back at them, showing no shame or remorse for the scene she had quite intentionally broken up.

Carol's own eyes narrow as they lock with the girl's.

Daryl's eyes dart between the two females, his body tensing at the instinctive knowledge that all was suddenly not well but being a male he clearly had no idea what was transpiring in the staring contest.

"You head on back and get some before it gets cold," Carol tells him without taking her attention from Cassie.

She felt his eyes upon her for just a moment, curious and questioning, before he took her up on the escape and left them.

Alone once more with the teenager, the niceties dropped.

"I thought we'd reached an understanding," she frowns her displeasure and steps nearer to the girl.

"We did," Cassie tips her head back and smiles. "I'll not monopolize him any longer."

Carol senses more and waits for it, growing impatient as the girl relished the power she had in the moment and she drew it out.

"That doesn't mean I'll make it easy for anyone else to have him."

With that and a flip of her long hair over her shoulder, the girl turns and walks back toward the campfire, a bounce visible in her step.

And with that, Carol realizes that the child may well be evil and that playing nice would get her nowhere if she wanted Daryl.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Couple quickies. 1) forgot to note in the previous chapter that Cassie is playing Miranda Lambert's "Kerosene" as I imagine Cassie to be a spitfire like that country gal and it's a fun song - I debated her doing "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend," but my Daryl muses ran for his tent and wouldn't come out at the idea of *that* girl singing such a song in his direction. 2) I am having far too much fun writing this series. It's no longer a parody, it's an all-out crack!fic. I hope y'all are enjoying the read as much as I love the write. :P

2/08/12 note: I've come back and added on to this chapter as I write the next one as it wasn't working to start the next chapter where I had it, so if you read this prior to today, newness is tacked on after the "How could anyone not love this child" that I had originally trailed off with.

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><p>For days afterward, Daryl was able to move relatively unencumbered by Cassie's presence and he began to lose some of the paranoid air that had surrounded him when the girl first backed off.<p>

Carol watched him watching the girl as Cassie giggled and fussed over Glenn while the Korean would blush a fiery red and inch desperately away.

Now that someone else was in that position, Daryl obviously found it as endlessly amusing as they had when the girl had been focused on him and Carol often saw the man grinning at the youngsters. Once or twice Daryl would egg the child on, asking for a demonstration of how Glenn's guitar lessons had been going and the young man's face would twist into such a pained expression that Carol almost choked with laughter each time.

One night, Daryl settled down next to her in a camping chair while they sat around the campfire listening to Glenn's faltering strums of the guitar strings.

Cassie had glanced up sharply at the move, eyeing the distance between the chairs they sat in to insure it was sufficient to prevent intimacy before the girl returned her focus to Glenn. She kept her attention divided, though, between Glenn and Carol, her green eyes telling the woman that any sudden moves toward Daryl could result in a tantrum to end the quiet of the evening.

She almost shuddered to think of the number of things this girl could have grown to be in the world as it had been. Cassie's skill at manipulation would have been quite adaptable in politics and were this new world ever to develop a government again, Carol would likely elect the girl for President. She didn't see many world leaders as being capable of resisting both the girl's classic beauty and her obvious intent to eradicate or destroy anything that might get in the way of her own agenda.

She smiled at the thought and the girl who narrowed said eyes in warning at Carol's apparent amusement.

Carol knew good and well that the child could drive a very tangible wedge between Daryl and herself, but the theatrics were having an unintended consequence.

Waging silent warfare with a minor was something every mother prepared for from the moment they learned they were expecting and Carol had never had the chance to test her skills with Sophia. While that thought would always sadden her, she was able to work through it and embrace the challenges presented by this young girl.

She knew Daryl was confounded by the situation. As one might expect, he failed to why he was suddenly free to go off hunting again without the child following in open admiration of his tracking stealth, but if he ever bent to exchange a confidence with Carol he soon found Cassie at his side demanding his full attention.

Regardless of the loss of law and tradition that had governed the country, Carol still opted to take her Fifth Amendment right and remained silent when she could have explained to him some of what was going on. It simply would not do for the man to have it explained to him how Cassie found it amusing to interfere with Carol's feelings for him, especially if he weren't fully aware of the fact that Carol had any feelings for him.

She was a little surprised that the girl hadn't called her out on it for entertainment, but she supposed they had made enough of a connection that Cassie was happy to just spoil any alone times she managed to find with Daryl.

"I don't suppose you'll ever explain it to me," Daryl said softly, echoing some of her thoughts.

"I doubt you'd understand," she returned, smiling softly at the idea of him trying to wrap his head around how a female complicated such things.

"Probably right," he groused, shifting to pull his right foot up across his left knee as he leant back to study her. "Never could understand the way a woman went. Always having to make something of nothing."

She arched her brow at that, not caring much for that attitude even if she had already known his thinking along those lines.

"I suppose we should be more zen," she scoffed, "like you."

He looked at her, cautious and considering as he caught on to her tone.

"Couldn't hurt," he shrugged after a moment, giving her a sideways grin that defused any tension.

She found herself grinning back at him. Without realizing it, her body shifted toward him and he leant toward her, both enjoying the exchange.

She hadn't even heard the guitar music fade in the background, but the reason for the silence in the camp had become evident when Cassie suddenly appeared and swung the instrument against Daryl's chest to force him back away from Carol.

"You sure you've never played guitar? I can't help but think you'd be a natural at it," his startled eyes locked with the girl's as he was left with no choice but to grasp the guitar. "I could teach you a few chords, too."

Her smile had been gentle and encouraging, expression hopeful and urging him to accept the offer.

His eyes darted from the instrument to the girl to Carol and back a few times, but he found no help from any of them.

"Wouldn't want to mess up Glenn's guitar," he cleared his throat and pushed to his feet. "I'm sure he's about ready for another lesson as it is."

With that he had thrust the guitar at the child and bolted, not caring that Glenn had done a similar vanishing act the second Cassie's attention had been diverted.

"Exactly how long are you going to keep this up?"

Cassie plunked down in the abandoned chair with a shrug and settled the guitar skillfully across her lap.

"Our time here may not be limitless," Carol bent toward the girl, the seriousness of her tone and posture causing the child's fingers to pause when they had begun to idly strum the strings. "We've lost too many camps. Too many people. When you find something to hold on to, it's precious and rare and should be respected."

She hadn't lingered to see how the girl took her words, but she had felt those greens eyes on her as she walked away to her tent.

The games finally drew to an end after nearly two weeks as the females found a common cause to unite them.

Andrea had begun to draw away from Shane, the woman growing as uncomfortable as the rest of them with how the man continued to try dividing the group from Rick's leadership. With the withdrawal from one man, the blonde was turning more often to Daryl.

Cassie was rabid in her efforts to keep Andrea from finding time alone with the hunter, but the blonde wasn't as easily shaken off as Carol. The other woman often found and had valid reasons for going off alone with Daryl, given her proficiency with weapons to watch the man's back when hunting.

On this morning, Carol watches as Daryl attempted to slip from the camp alone and Andrea requested to tag along for the exercise. Cassie had gone immediately for her shotgun to go with the duo, but Andrea had put the brakes on that idea quickly and Daryl had gladly let the woman turn the girl away.

Carol watches the scene with a growing frown, counting it as the third time in these past two weeks that the pair had been left on their own while she had had what felt like only five whole minutes of time alone with the man.

After their departing heads disappear from sight, she sees Cassie turn toward her with blood in the girl's eye. Feeling in no mood whatsoever to deal with a tantrum when she felt capable of throwing one herself, she went to turn and ignore the teenager.

Her elbow was immediately clasped by a familiar hand and her eyes went to it in surprise. She follows the hand up the arm to Cassie's face and arches her brow at the girl's audacity to restrain her.

Cassie ignores the chiding glance and begins to drag Carol after the pair.

"What are you doing?"

Thinking the girl intended them to follow after the others, she digs her heels in against such an absurd idea, but Cassie suddenly pushes her to the left toward the clearing where an impromptu shooting range had again been established for the odd target practice.

"You," Cassie said, taking her shotgun and shoving it in Carol's hands, "will learn this."

She stares at the weapon in her hands and immediately feels the denials piling on the tip of her tongue.

"This is a Browning Citori 20 gauge with a stacked barrel," the girl gives her no time to argue and begins her tutorial. "It loads like any double barrel."

Carol surrenders the weapons immediately when Cassie reaches for it, watching as those little hands skillfully crack the gun open and expose the shells loaded in the chamber.

"Two shells; one over, one under," she stares until Carol gives a nod of understanding before the girl snaps the chamber closed again. "This is your barrel selector," she indicates a polished silver latch on the top of the gun, near the place where it broke open to load. "Don't need to do a thing with it, but that's what it is. Safety's already off," her fingers indicate the sliding button near the selector. "Way things are here, all you have to know is load, point, fire, reload."

The gun is thrust back at her with those words and Carol balks at accepting it again.

"I'm not good with weapons," she twists her hands together to keep the shotgun out of her grasp.

"You prefer dying?" Cassie snaps, eyes narrowing at the rejection.

"Shane and Rick have both tried-"

"Not my fault you've blown perfectly good opportunities to have Daryl show you," the girl interrupts, forcibly untangling Carol's fingers until the woman's hands separate for the gun to be shoved back in them. "You wanna spend the rest of this limited time you seem to think we have watching him go off with another woman 'cause you're not up to watching his back or going with him on a hunt?"

Carol feels the words like the slap to the face the child intended and she sucks in a breath.

"Point and fire," Cassie orders briskly, stepping to the sideline once she'd guided Carol to stand in front of the tin cans set on a log.

"Be ready for a kick back," the girl orders a bit late when Carol obeys her previous command by putting the weapon to her shoulder, lining up a shot and pulling the trigger.

The recoil knocks the butt of the gun hard into her collarbone and Carol flinches at the bruise she knows will form there. She winces and drops the gun downward to dangle from her right hand as she grabs the shoulder with her left.

Cassie laughs at the reaction, her anger of a moment ago fading as quickly as it had come upon her. Carol glares at the child, not appreciating having been used in such a fashion for the adolescent's amusement.

"Wait for it," the girl gasps out, doubling over at the ire she's stirring.

Before Carol can do anything more than think to question what she was to be waiting for, she heard the rustling of feet through the underbrush. She spun toward the noise, not bothering to raise the weapon for defense as the movement was too quick to be a Walker.

Daryl breaks into the clearing after a moment, Andrea hot on his heels and Cassie quickly recovers herself to straighten with all traces of laughter wiped from her expression.

A piece of the puzzle falls into place and Carol suddenly realizes why the girl had been so urgent in getting Carol to fire off a shot. Cassie hadn't been about to allow that pair to get outside of earshot for that shotgun blast, which wasn't very loud from the Browning.

"What the hell was that?" the man snarls, stalking toward them with his eyes sweeping the area for danger.

"Target practice," Cassie replies, stating the obvious with no concern for the glare he pinned on her. "This _is_ the shooting range."

He relaxes his stance after verifying that there is no threat to the pair then turns his narrowed eyes to the weapon held so carelessly in Carol's hand.

"What the hell are you trying to teach her?" he glares back at Cassie and whips the gun away from Carol. "How to maim herself?"

He frowns at the way Carol winces at the pull on her shoulder when he takes the Citori and he moves in closer to eye her with concern.

"Well, if you can do better," Cassie huffs, feigning upset as she snatches her shotgun away from the man. "You teach her and I'll take Andrea out. I'm sure we can muster up meat for a meal between the two of us."

Just like that they found themselves rearranged by the whirlwind of action that was the teenager. She corrals the blonde away so quickly that Andrea follows without hesitation or complaint, leaving Carol and Daryl behind.

While Daryl stands there all but scratching his head in confusion, Cassie peers back over her shoulder and locks eyes with Carol. The girl winks at her then jerks her chin at Daryl in a signal that Carol somehow deciphered to mean that she now had the teenager's permission to pursue the man.

She snorts out a surprised laugh as the girl whips back around and continues on her jaunty way.

_How could anyone not love this child, _she shakes her head in wonder at the brilliantly executed maneuver that she had never seen coming.

Carol feels Daryl's eyes snap to stare at her in her amusement, but she can only give her head another shake as Cassie and Andrea disappear from sight.

"This your idea?" his tone implied that he wasn't quite sure what "this" was, but he knew well enough that he'd been roped into something.

"Target practice?" she scoff, turning to him and rubbing her shoulder. "Definitely not my idea."

"Lemme see," he sets his crossbow down on the ground and turns to her with a frown at her shoulder.

"It's fine," she protests his concern, but makes no move to reject his touch when he grips her arm in one hand and pushes at the collar of her shirt with the other.

His frown darkens at being unable to get the material out of the way enough to see the full bruise developing. He glares at the shirt, gnaws for a moment at the corner of his mouth then sets his jaw and moves his fingers to the tiny buttons running the length of the sleeveless blouse she had chosen for the day.

It was the same garment that she had worn the day Sophia had been discovered in the barn, but her mind didn't go to that tragic scene. She thinks back to their last truly private and intimate moment, when he had taken the time to apologize to her for his loss of temper in the stable. Her heart had shuddered then much as it did now in reaction to his attention.

She holds her breath and stares at him as he focuses intently on the task if pushing one button free of its hole followed by another. His fingers move to test the give of the slackened fabric, but it still isn't enough to expose her whole collarbone.

When he hesitates to uncover her further, she lifts her own fingers to undo the next two buttons before she tips her head to the side and pulls the edge of the shirt away from the skin turning red from the impact of the gun.

"It'll bruise," she says, taking a look at the mottled flesh herself, "but nothing more."

"That buck is always worse than you expect the first time," he frowns and after a second of delay he begins to gently prod the area. "Can break a bone if you're not ready for it. Fool kid should've known better."

Not wanting to reveal her suspicions that the kid was anything but a fool and had perhaps known all too well how this scene might play out, Carol bites her tongue and tries not to react to his exploration of her bared skin.

He's able to determine the lack of broken bone easily enough from her lack of a truly pained reaction to his touch, but his hands linger and she knows when the touch stops being clinical.

She turns her head toward him and their gazes lock. She senses the want within him and feels pretty sure that she isn't just projecting her own desire upon him as he seems to dip his head toward her. His hand skims over the curve of her shoulder to cup her neck and she closes her eyes to savor the feel of their mouths meeting for the first time.

"I take it everything's ok here?"

Daryl jumps away from her as if she'd tried to set him on fire as Rick's amused voice cuts into the scene.

The interruption shatters the mood and Daryl quickly stoops to retrieve his crossbow then stalks off into the woods away from them.

"Goddamnit," Carol can't help but utter as she watches him go and stifles the ridiculous wish that she still held Cassie's gun.

She feels Rick's eyes upon her and turns to glare at him, wanting to ask how Cassie had bribed him for this interference.

"I..uh…I interrupted something?"

"Don't feel bad," she snorts at that bit of idiocy before she pushes past him. "Everyone's doing it."


	4. Chapter 4

Notes: 1) To those of you who've already read up to here, I tacked on a bit to chapter 3 and you'll kind of need to duck back and read it since it just worked better to put it there rather than start this chapter with it. 2) I am of the conclusion that I have Cassie muses and these muses are just weird. I blame said muses and cold medicine for the content of this chapter. 3) In continuation of note 2, let it be known that I know nothing about hunting or field dressing wild boar...this is all Cassie. I'm just along for the ride like Carol, watching with that kind of Yeeeeeeech face while the girl does her thing. I have no idea why these details seemed essential to the chapter, but here we go...

* * *

><p>Frustration put anyone in a bad mood, so the others quickly pick up on the fact that Carol needed some alone time when she snaps at anyone who tries to make small talk.<p>

She focuses her energy on washing the tougher pieces of laundry that none of them wanted to tackle because Walker gore was repulsive to pick off fabric and the blood impossible to get out. It takes the whole of the morning to repeatedly scrub the garments on the old-fashioned washing board and wring them of water. Her shoulder is a dull ache compared to the burn of her muscles from the exertion, but she feels better for having accomplished something with the time.

Andrea is just stalking into the camp when Carol carries the heavy laundry basket into camp to begin hanging the wash. She doesn't see Cassie and nearly drops the clothes in her horror at seeing blood spatter on the other woman.

Before she can voice her first thought, the girl comes into sight and Carol feels relief like a kick in the chest.

Cassie strolls into the camp dragging a black carcass behind her, the deliberate nonchalance of her stride telling the mother in Carol that the girl had done something.

As Carol watches, Andrea turns to glare at the carcass before turning to stomp to her tent, showing them all her grass-strained backside.

Cassie is all smiles as she comes to a stop before Carol.

"Hope you didn't wear Daryl out too much," she grins, dropping her kill proudly between them on the ground. "Gonna need his help with this fucker."

"Language," Carol chides for what feels to be the hundredth time.

She looks at the matted hairs of the feral pig at her feet and can't help her nose turning up a bit at the idea of eating the thing.

"They're not bad," Cassie says, seeing the expression. "It's a little older than is ideal, but I wouldn't have bothered bringing it back if it were too rank to eat."

"Let's string it up."

Carol sets the laundry down with a nod to Lori for the other woman to hang it. She returns to help the girl drag the boar to the gambrel Daryl had built on the edge of the camp for the cleaning of his larger game kills.

He had tried to be respectful of the squeamish members of the group by setting up the wooden rigging out of plain view, but still near enough that they could be sure no predators came after the hanging carcass. Carol had helped him with a few deer and had gotten over most of her nausea at the process of gutting and skinning game.

She lowers the hanger then kneels on the ground with Cassie while they each latch a hind hoof of the animal to the beam.

As she pulls the rope to raise the carcass from the ground, she watches Cassie's eyes narrowing as they survey the camp.

"Why am I thinking things did not go as planned this morning?"

"Probably," Carol says as she ties the rope to a nearby tree to anchor the hanging animal, "for the same reason I am thinking that you had a little more fun with your hunt than you should have."

Cassie snorts out a laugh and grins at being called on it.

"She's such a drama queen," the girl says, knowing exactly what Carol had been getting at. "'AHH. It's a wild boar!'" she begins to mockingly reenact the supposed events of the hunt. "'AHH! It's chasing me! EEEE! I might break a nail running from this snorting little beast. OH MY GAWD who keeps putting roots on these damned trees for me to trip over?'"

Carol lost it at the girl's wildly flailing limbs with that last line, laughing until she cried at the mental picture she had of Andrea being chased through the woods by the raging pig until the other woman tripped and fell.

"It's not like I let it hurt her or anything," Cassie was defending through Carol guffaws. "He was only snorting her when I took the shot. You'd think she'd be used to keeping some blood on her after all this, but it was like WHOA when she got hit with the splatter. You should've seen the way she freaked and scrambled away from the body. I would've gotten a gazillion hits on YouTube with that."

The girl fell quiet after that, the serious kind of silence that almost instantly ended Carol's amusement with concern.

"I miss YouTube," Carol had only a passing knowledge of the website the girl mourned, but it was enough to see the girl mourning. "I can't imagine that there isn't someone Tweeting in this world. That I may never reblog a Supernatural Wincest picspam again."

To Carol, it's all gibberish and she flounders for some consoling remark as Cassie turns to her with wide, wounded and watering eyes.

"Do you think we'll ever get back online?"

Carol clears her throat and scrambles internally for a response in the spot the question and stare put her on.

"I'm sure Glenn would have some great ideas on that topic," she finally ventures.

As a distracter, it somehow manages to work and Carol exhales in relief as Cassie's hyper young mind takes off with the new direction.

"He's so cool," Cassie gushes, bending position blue tarp over the ground below the boar then to yank the hunting knife from her boot. "He's totally like Ellis with that ball cap, don't you think? It's funny," the girl muses while grasping the hilt of the knife in both hands, raising it over her head then plunging it into the animal's groin and slashing downward to cut the underbelly open. "Everyone was always bitching about the violence of video games, but how kickass would Glenn or I really be now if we hadn't logged all those hours playing Left 4 Dead? It's like freaky appropriate that Left 4 Dead 2 was the last video game I beat."

Carol wants to argue against some of the things this young girl had seen in her life, but she cannot argue the benefit as Cassie is able to so effortlessly gut the feral pig.

"Go get me a container for this," Cassie orders before she prepares to delve into the main cavity to make sure all internal organs have fallen from the kill.

She takes off, gratefully, to avoid watching that. She had gotten to where she could watch Daryl dig around inside a deer, but there was something vastly disturbing about seeing a girl as young as Cassie do it. She rummages in the RV for a few of the larger Tupperware containers, not sure what all Cassie intended to keep. She grabs a towel, tucking it along with the containers under her arm before grabbing a gallon jug of water and a bar of soap.

Carol returns to find the girl squatting over the tarp, flicking aside bits of debris with the tip of her knife until she found the organ she sought.

Cassie gives her a brief glance, nodding her approval at the containers and disregarding the other items Carol had. The girl gives up the idle flicking to dig her hands into the pile on retrieve a piece of something from the bloody mess. She studies it closely, turning and flipping it in her hands until she's seen every possible inch and angle.

"Damn, I'm good," she boasts with a grin that Carol returns weakly. "Look at it. Not one nick."

"What is it?" she asks, merely glancing at the organ as it dripped blood to the ground.

"Dinner," Cassie beams and reaches for the smaller container Carol held. "Fry it up with some onions and it's better than any other liver you'll have had."

While Carol debates the merits of turning to veganism, Cassie seals the alleged liver up and then sets the container aside to begin folding the tarp over the other innards. She jerks her head in a fashion all to similar to Daryl's and Carol quietly moves to follow the girl into the woods to dispose of the discards safely away from camp.

"So," Cassie asks as they pick their way through the brush, "what went wrong? You didn't come on too strong, did you?"

Carol's step falters at that. She knows the topic that the kid's mind has jumped to and the idea that _Cassie_ might be about to advise anyone on coming on too strongly was laughable.

"What?" Cassie stops to whip her an incredulous glance. "You know how jumpy he is. Blink at him the wrong way and he'll swear you're giving him cooties or something."

"_I_ know that," Carol says pointedly.

"You think I didn't? Honey, when you're young you've gotta push past all that malarkey," the girl resumes their trek. "Only time you can get away with bulldozing before they start calling you a bitch for doing it."

The wisdom is only a little unexpected, but Carol still doesn't see the girl as worthy of giving advice on the ways of man and woman.

"I haven't seen that working so much for you," she counters softly.

"That's because the seed's only been planted," Cassie grins at some inner secret and says no more on that particular note. "Now for an old lady like you," she switches tack with no reaction to the evil eye Carol flashes her at the wording. "You've got to be careful. Always going to be some grown woman flashing herself for him, so that gets old."

"Excuse me?" she scowls, not having any clue which part of the statement offends her most.

"He's a man, all grown and strong and cute and capable. It's hot. Women are always drawn to that kind of thing for security and companionship and all that boring old people stuff," Cassie elaborates, not stopping her forward motion into the woods as Carol tries to keep up and take in this 'knowledge' from the child. "Young things like me, we're too short term for all that. Sure, I still look at him and think, 'Ooooh, what scruffy haired ginger babies we'll make,' but that's way in the background because I am so not ready for kids. But hot sweaty monkey sex? Who isn't ready for that once puberty hits?"

Carol walks straight into the tree without having any idea how it had managed to grow in her path like it was.

Cassie cackles.

"I know," the girl waves a hand as Carol begins to open her mouth, "I'm too young, he's too old, a-whooped-de-dooped-de-do. Just saying, men like the whole Lolita thing because we're more likely to do it, like it and move on to try it with someone else. The younger you are the more you experiment. World's an oyster and all that jazz. It's not till a woman starts getting old, like twenty," Carol scoffs at that, "that the thinking goes all wonky for a one-man, one-future kind of deal. And that scares a fella."

"And you know this from…"

"I watched daytime TV. Oprah, Dr. Phil. All My Children."

"Erica Kane really isn't an appropriate role model-"

"I'll say. That old hag was soooooo boring. Colby was awesome, even if they did have to go and make her a blonde."

Carol rubs her forehead, feeling a headache building as she wonders how a conversation like this even begins.

"My parents used to do that a lot, too," Carol looks up at the solemnly quiet tone and the girl gives her a lopsided grin. "Grown-ups have never understood my brilliance. Anyhoo," the girl shrugs off whatever thought she had had and resumes her cocky stride. "I'm done waiting for details. I'm not letting you mack on my man without getting it back vicariously through you."

Even being unfamiliar with the lingo the child used, Carol finds something vastly wrong with that idea and shakes her head in confusion.

"Nothing happened," she finally answers.

Cassie grinds to a stop and looks at her sharply.

"You _are_ interested in him, right? I mean, everyone's said what an asshole your husband was and all that and the whole battered thing is so wrong and guys who do that deserve to be eaten to death by a zombie hoard, but you are still **in**to _guys_, right?"

"Yes," Carol snaps, blushing at the implication that her tastes would have changed so drastically with recent events. "I am very much interested in him."

"Then what the fuck?" Cassie asks, rolling her eyes when Carol gives her a speaking glance at the profanity. "I set the perfect scene for some touchy feely if not an all out roll in the bushes and I came back to you doing laundry and Daryl off….where? Doing what?"

"I don't know," Carol sighs. "We were just about to get to the real touchy feely when Rick interrupted us and Daryl kind of took off."

"You have got to be sh…kidding me," Cassie utters in disbelief, cleaning the thought up under Carol's warning glare.

"No, he just got his bow and left and I-"

"No, not that, I'm sure he's off killing something to work off his frustration," she waves a bloody hand in dismissal. "I mean," she raises that hand toward Carol flips up the index finger while leaving the others folded into a fist, "one; what do _you _mean Rick interrupted. Two," her middle finger springs up to emphasize the second point, "what _exactly _did Rick interrupt."

"One," Carol says, reaching out to fold the middle finger back down, "I mean, Rick came running at that shotgun blast and he broke us up before we could do anything, just as I'm sure you planned."

"Dude, I've given you a clear field," Cassie protests the allegation with genuine, wide-eyed disbelief. "Rick had absolutely nothing to do with my plans. I was thinking the two of you would finally go at it like bunny rabbits without me hovering. Which I so would have stayed to watch if Andrea hadn't had to be a pest….I wouldn't have watched _everything_," the girl defends when Carol eyes her in horror at the idea. "Just the getting naked. _Daryl's_ getting naked," she emphasized. "No offense."

Carol can only blink at the child as she processes the chatter.

Cassie huffs out a sigh and turns back to the path, moving just a bit further into the woods before finding a spot she deemed safe enough to leave the scraps. She unfurls the tarp and lets the viscera fall to the ground before she gives the canvas a few shakes to try getting everything off it. When a few bits cling stubbornly to the tarp, she grumbles and picks them off with her fingers.

"Why is this stuff always so hard to get off?" she asks, flicking at the bit of guts that now seemed stuck to her flesh. "And it gets frickin' everywhere. Daryl said there was this one time, after he'd fought off like a whole gang of Walkers and he found a severed finger that had somehow gotten in his underwear. That's why he always double-checks his belt now, to make sure it's cinched super tight. 'Nothin' getting in my pants again,' he said."

They share a grin at the idea of the man fussing over something like that before the threat of a zombie attack.

After a moment, Cassie gives up trying to dislodge the gore on her fingers by flicking it away and she wipes her hands on her pants, making Carol sigh at the thought of all the clothing she had just worked so hard to get clean of such messes.

"So," Cassie prods as they head back to camp, "two?"

"Two," Carol thinks of what Rick had and hadn't interrupted earlier, "is none of your business."

She ruffles the girl's hair and smiles at Cassie's evil-eyed glare, enjoying the opportunity to be the annoying one for a change.

"Just when I was starting to think you could be cool," Cassie pouts and stomps past her.

She laughs at the reaction and follows at a mellow pace, never having tried or cared to be cool in her life.

When she gets back to the gambrel, she finds the girl beginning the process of skinning the boar with a little more enthusiasm than Carol felt the chore warranted.

She feels no desire to linger for the task and bends to pick up the liver and unused containers, knowing it would take some time before the meat was ready to cut and put into anything for transport to the campfire and preparation for cooking.

"Make sure you wash up," she instructs, gesturing toward the jug of water, towel and soap set on the ground nearby.

"Why?" Cassie asks, frowning in genuine confusion. "It's just animal bits."

There was something so Daryl in that retort that Carol shakes her head and thinks that she had maybe waited too long before interceding in the amount of time the girl spent with the hunter.

"Just do it, you little heathen," she orders with a grin before turning to go back to camp.

"Yes, mother," the girl replies, joking and sarcastic with the words.

Carol feels the endearment like an arrow to the heart and turns to stare at the child as Cassie goes back to skinning her kill.

Feeling like a foolish old woman, Carol presses a hand to her chest and blinks away tears before forcing herself to continue on to the RV. She puts the unused container away and sets the liver on the table with the other things that were being collected for the evening meal she or Dale would ultimately cook.

Those simple tasks are completed in seconds and she looks around the vehicle for something else she can focus her energy on.

Her eyes find only space that she has already cleaned and organized countless times and without anything else to do, she sits at the table, puts her head down and begins to cry.


	5. Chapter 5

The trailer rocks under the weight of someone stepping up into it and Carol bolts upright, scrubbing at the tear still flowing from her eyes.

She looks up to find Daryl hovering just inside the Winnebago, clearly uncertain as to whether he should enter or go away.

She sniffles and gives him a weak smile, the only encouragement she can muster at the moment. He takes it as intended, though, and quietly shuts the door behind him before moving toward her.

He slides into the seat across from her and eyes her tears like they're an enemy he needs to wrestle into defeat.

"What happened?"

Carol is touched at the way his defenses rise so quickly at the idea of something upsetting her and she gets to feeling all misty again at his protective urges.

"Cassie," she begins, not really sure how to explain how the girl had touched her.

"That's it," he sets his jaw at the name and prepares to slip right back out of the RV, "that girl's caused more than enough trouble."

"No," Carol stops him with a hand to the forearm. "She didn't do anything wrong."

He looks at the hand on his flesh then her tear stained cheeks and changes his course, moving to kneel at her side.

"Why these, then?" he slowly lifts a hand to brush at her tears with the rough pad of his thumb. "I hate you crying."

"I'm getting pretty sick of it myself," she jokes, feeling fresh tears of emotion well up at his caress.

"Think you could maybe stop, then?" he frowns and wipes helplessly at the moisture rolling down her cheeks.

"Sorry," she pulls reluctantly away from him and rises, gently pushing past him to grab a paper towel to dab at her face. "She called me mom."

She stares out the window over the sink, but doesn't see the camp.

"She was being sarcastic, because I was mothering and told her to wash up when she was done, but she called me mother and it just…" she bites her lip as no one word came to mind for the emotion she'd felt.

"You'll be proud of her," she sniffles, moving determinedly past the memory and latching on to another topic. "She got a boar. It's a mangy looking thing, but she practically preened when she dragged it into camp. You should probably go help her finish dressing it."

"She knows what to do," he waves away the suggestion; clearly not about to be distracted by anything until her understood her upset. "Is it…Sophia?"

Sensing that he wasn't going to let the matter go until she sorts through it herself, she sighs and turns to lean back against the counter. He assumes a similar position, standing to lean back against the table, hands bracing on the surface as he stares at her expectantly.

It takes her a moment to push aside the sudden urge to tackle him back onto the tabletop as his shirt strains over his chest in his new position.

"Kind of," she clears her throat and looks away from him to seek the right words without distraction. "It's hard. I hate to admit it, but … I haven't thought of her as much since Cassie got here."

"You can't let yourself go to the grave with her," he argues softly, moving to stand at her side and forcing her to tip her head back and look at him. "It's not wrong to survive without her."

She wanted to point out some of the difficulties he had had in letting Sophia's ghost lie, but bites her tongue, not wanting to stir up a larger scene than she'd already made.

"I know Cassie is Cassie and I haven't once seen or thought of her as Sophia, but I think…I think I've been mothering her. I think I've needed her to be like Sophia and to need mothered. She's so strong, but so young. If you hadn't found her…"

"I did," he brushes his fingers over her mouth to stop the words. "I found Cassie, at least. Saved one."

"More than her," she grasps his fingers and presses a kiss to his palm. "I wouldn't be here either, if not for you."

He stares at her, frowns a bit at the words and pulls his hand away.

"I ain't looking for gratitude," he snaps, turning from her.

"I don't believe I ever said that I was grateful for your intervention," she replies quietly, causing him to tense as if struck by her statement.

He turns his head around slowly to stare at her through narrowed eyes.

"You make me face and feel things I'd much rather have gone without facing or knowing, cowardly as that may seem. Just like Cassie makes me feel things I never thought I would after losing my child. I don't exactly want to thank either of you for that. The feelings hurt and they scare me and I suddenly can't seem to stop crying," she ends with a disgusted huff as fresh tears well up in her eyes.

His hands are tentative on her shoulders as she bends away from him to scrub once more at her tears. He holds her for a moment, flexing his fingers in an almost massaging motion before he presses up against her.

"They scare me, too," he confesses into the back of her head.

She turns suddenly in his grasp and their mouths are perilously close with how his is bent and hers tilted back.

"Does that mean that you have feelings," she looks into his eyes hopefully, "for me?"

"Hell, woman," he huffs against her mouth as his hand moves to cradle the back of her skull, "if you don't already know that then you're the only damned one in this camp who hasn't noticed me all but mooning over you."

With that, he holds her head still for the press of his lips to hers. It starts as a quick buss, closed mouths pushing together then breaking apart, but she's not about to let it end there.

She chases him when he would have retreated; raising her hands to pull at his shoulders as she parts her lips and goes after his. She tongues his mouth open and he gives a muffled sound of surprise as she urges him backward until he hits the edge of the table.

His hand moving from her head to her shoulder is enough to stop her from sweeping the dinner fixings aside for them to take advantage of the nearest flat, horizontal surface.

She freezes, pulling back at the urging of his hand and she remembers how she had scoffed at Cassie's assumption that she may have come on too strongly when left alone with the man on the shooting range. For all her talk of knowing how skittish the man was, Carol kicks herself now with the knowledge that she had very nearly mauled him in the kitchenette.

That she wanted to maul him and maybe have him maul her back, went without saying, but he clearly wasn't ready for something like that.

"Too much?"

"Lil bit," he says, watching her closely as she slowly moves away.

"Sorry," she shrugs sheepishly and blushes at the way he darts away from the table.

"I'ma…I'm just gonna go check on Cassie," he stumbles down the step to fall against the door to the RV.

He opens the door and all but falls to the ground through the sudden opening.

Carol watches him go with chagrin and wonders how much damage she had just done.

On the one hand, she found it laughable that a man of his age and looks could be unused to the lust he evoked in the female of the species, but on the other hand he was running from her like a flustered virgin.

There was no way she would be able to get a straight answer from him on such a sensitive matter, so she turns her focus to preparing dinner.

As she works, she debates the best way to bring the topic up with Cassie, knowing and loathing that the girl would be her best source of insight into anything Daryl.


	6. Chapter 6

Carol doesn't get a chance to try out any of the opening lines she'd practiced.

Within an hour, Cassie comes stomping into camp and zeroes in on her with narrowed eyes. She grabs Carol's arm and drags her into the Winnebago. Once inside the camper the girl tosses her shotgun and knife carelessly on the table as if she didn't trust herself with the weapons in hand.

"What'd you do?"

Carol closes the door behind them as calmly as possible and considers playing dumb while the teenager glares at her, foot tapping in agitation and fisted hands jammed against her slender hips. Cassie looks ready to bite a head off and Carol didn't want to offer her own up for the meal.

"You didn't rape him did you?"

The question is too absurd to ignore and Carol assumes a matching stance as she squares off with the girl. She puts her hands on her hips and draw in a deep breath for a calm she knew would be quickly lost in dealing with this child.

"No," she finally answer, with the only trace of calm she can find, "I did not _rape_ him."

"It must have been pretty darn close, because that boy was straight trippin' when he got to me."

Carol has no idea how to translate the girl's chosen description, but she assumes from the context that Daryl may have been a little out of sorts.

"I … maybe … _maybe_," she feels her cheeks heat as she remembers how she _did _but won't tell this child, "came on a little strong."

"Did you now, Ms. 'I don't need advice from _you _because I'm a Daryl Dixon expert?'" Cassie scoffs, rolls her eyes and hops up on the kitchen table. "What'd you do?"

Seeing the girl perch so innocently on that table, her skinny legs swinging idly as she awaits her answer, Carol blushes a fiery red thinking of what she'd wanted to do to Daryl on that surface.

Cassie sees the blush, frowns as her mind sorts through possible reasons for the reaction and then her green eyes go to the table she's sitting on. She looks up again at Carol, sees the woman looking at the table and the girl jumps back to the floor as if burnt.

"Ewwwwwwww! We _eat_ on this table!"

"We didn't _do_ anything on it," Carol protests. "I just…"

The teenager is looking at her with a little too much interest, clearly wanting to know exactly what had happened and Carol grinds her words to a halt to keep from giving such details.

"I have had sex ed, you know," Cassie huffs at the cease in words. "I could probably give you some pointers if you'd stop being a prude and tell me the good stuff."

"I think I can figure this out on my own, thank you very much," Carol counters, crossing her arms over her chest as the girl did the same.

"Oh, yeah, I see how well that's going," they begin to circle one another. "Your man's off stomping in the woods and you're abusing dinner on the campfire because you're both doing such a bang up job of figuring out what to do with all your sexual tension. You know, I am seriously beginning to question my decision to step aside for you."

Carol 's mouth opens to lecture the girl on the zero right the child had to be remarking upon anyone's sexual tension, giving no thought to rising to the baited comment about the girl's stepping aside, when the part about Daryl stomping off in the woods struck her.

"What do you mean, Daryl's off stomping in the woods?"

Cassie waves off the concerned frown starting to knit Carol's brow, "He's just dumping the hide in the woods."

"Where in the woods?"

"Where we always go," Cassie frowns and drops one hand back to her hip. "Why are you trying to distract me with _that?"_

"You let him go to the dump site, alone, with fresh blood soaked bits of animal?"

"He does it all the time. Hello," Cassie again rolls her eyes, "that's how it came to be our dump site?"

Carol inhales deeply and slowly releases the breath before moving back the girl to open the weapons closet. She studies the arsenal of blunt force objects and bites her lips in consideration of which she could likely use herself.

She senses Cassie moving to hover behind her, the girl looking at her rather than the weapons.

"What's wrong with you? It's not like he hasn't dumped scraps a hundred ti-"

"We dumped the organs first," Carol casts her worried eyes back toward the girl. "How often has he gone with bait having been left instead of just holding all the scraps to make one trip to dump them?"

Realization dawns and Cassie's eyes widen as she gets what Carol is worrying over.

"Oh shit."

Carol makes no attempt to scold the teenager for the utterance as it echoes her own thoughts on the subject. Cassie pushes her aside and reaches into the closet to retrieve two machetes; the one belonging to the girl and the other part of the groups' finds. The teenager keeps her own weapon and shoves the other into Carol's hands before rushing by on the way out of the RV.

Without a word, Carol moves after the girl, her worry increasing at the sudden urgency that fueled Cassie's movements.

"Don't let dinner burn," she orders Dale as she rushes past him, not bothering to address the look of worried concern on the older man's face.

She follows Cassie to the gambrel and beyond, hating that their pace slows once they re-enter the forest. Her steps mimic the young girl's as they pick quickly but quietly over the twigs and debris littering the ground.

She had wanted Cassie to continue scoffing at her; to deny there being any possibility that Daryl could be walking blindly into a trap they had unintentionally baited. Stragglers weren't uncommon and they always went were there was blood. While they obviously preferred living flesh, the fiends were starving and freshly dead flesh seemed to draw them as well now.

The snap of a dry twig nearby was the only warning they got before the Walker staggered into their path. Its appearance startles Carol into a backward stumble, but Cassie had clearly been anticipating such a scene and her machete slams down through the zombie's head. Blood splatters to Carol's face and shirt, leaving evidence of how close she had come to the creature, and as if topples to the ground she promises herself she'll be ready for the next one.

Because they had all learned that there was always a next one.

Cassie's eyes lock with hers over the fallen corpse as the girl yanks her weapon back from the body. Those green eyes have the same question in them that she's grown used to seeing in Daryl's gaze and Carol gives a reassuring nod to tell the teenager that she's ok, much as she would communicate to the man.

It was both comforting and eerie to find such strength in the young woman.

She watches the well-practiced way Cassie flicks her wrist to shake off the majority of blood and gore on her machete and wonders if she, a grown woman, will ever have such a confidence and expertise in what she does.

Cassie gives a meaningful jerk of her jaw and Carol knows thought time is over. They resume their trek, taking the steps slower and with even greater caution at having encountered one zombie already.

Fear for Daryl twists her gut and trumps the worry she has for her own safety as they get closer to the dump site.

She had thought maybe one or two to be picking over the scraps when they got there.

They stumble to a halt at the sight of the number of Walkers huddled over the discarded innards. Carol feels the knot of her gut yanked outward at the thought that there had to be something else that the fiends were feeding on.

Only a fresh kill would draw so many to feast.

_Daryl_, she thinks in horror.

Cassie's head snaps back toward her, green eyes widening with horror, and Carol realizes she had spoken aloud.

And that the zombies had heard her too.

"Goddamnit."

Again, Carol doesn't chastise the girl for voicing a curse when the same expletive is on the tip of her own tongue.

"Run," she grabs at the back of Cassie's shirt, urging the girl backward as the zombies start to stagger to their feet.

"No," the girl shakes her off, "I have to know!"

"There's nothing we can do," _if it's him under there._

The teenager simply widens her stance, bracing herself for the onslaught, and brings the machete up toward her shoulder like a baseball bat.

Not about to leave a child in such a position, Carol steps forward to stand at the girl's side and assumes a similar position. She's never done anything like this before, but has no doubt Cassandra will show her how it should be done.

"Just don't stop swinging," Cassie instructs as the Walkers begin to close in, six to just the two of them. "Aim for the head and take as many down with you as you can."

The order doesn't inspire any hope of survival.

Cassie springs suddenly into action, pivoting forward with her right foot as she swings with the machete and the top of the first zombie's skull flies off, exposing a brain that had been shaved off with the swipe. The body falls and the girl moves determinedly on to the next one, kicking it backward then slashing through its face.

As the girl charges into battle with the creatures, Carol stands frozen until her vision is filled by a broad chest covered in blood soaked cotton.

It is the moment of truth.

She stumbles back from the creature with a scream she cannot stifle and chops outward with the machete. The blade cuts into that bloody cotton, burying itself uselessly in the zombie's chest and she cries out again as big hands begin to grab at her clothes while she struggles to pull the weapon back.

Her knee comes up, not having enough space to draw back for a kick, and she wedges it against the Walker's gut, getting leverage just in time to yank the machete free. She grunts and falls backward, barely keeping her feet at the sudden lack of resistance on the other end of the weapon.

A tree trunk at her back helps to keep her upright and she has enough space now to kick outward. Her foot connects with the knee, as intended, and she manages to unbalance the big lug just enough for the wild swing of her machete to catch the creature in the neck. Its head flops backward as she nearly decapitates the thing and she finishes it off with a whack to the skull as the body falls to the ground.

There is no time to celebrate her first real kill in all of this as the next one is fast approaching.

This one she steps up to and swings at, just as she had seen Cassie do, and her blade slashes through the face of what looks to have been a grandmotherly sort of woman.

"It's not him!"

Cassie's sudden cry causes such a lurch in Carol's chest that she clutches at it, fearing a damned heart attack.

Her eyes dart over the area, panicky for the threat of more walkers, but she sees only the bodies that her companion had dropped. It was only slightly demoralizing to realize that the child had gotten four in the time that it took Carol to eliminate just two.

She locates the girl standing over the remains that the zombies had been gorging on. The relief she feels at seeing an animal instead of Daryl almost knocks her to her knees.

Their gazes meet over the bloody mess and they grin at one another.

"See? You got us all worked up over nothing!"

The tone was Cassie's usual bravado, but the girl's relief was as palpable as her own as Carol feels her own heartbeat return to normal.

A twig snapping nearby immediately jerks it into a rapid pattern as her head snaps in the direction of the noise.

"Can we run now?" she asks, seeing nothing but fearing something behind every tree now.

"Just try and keep up," Cassie huffs as she rushes past to the path she's taken so often to and from their camp.

A rustle of leaves in the direction of the previous twig snap, but slightly closer, is all the motivation Carol needs to not only run after the girl, but to pass her on the path as they race the hell away from that spot.

* * *

><p>AN: To all my readers, I am on a mission to update all my WIPs in the aftermath of the season finale to prove that I am far from abandoning this fandom or any of these stories. Tomorrow I will hopefully have additions to "Moving On" and "So Be It." I'm sorry for the delays in these updates. I had no idea how long it'd been until Roses in May pointed out that it'd been over a month since my last posting. Not going to offer any excuses, just promise you all that these stories will have a "The End" moment.

Eventually. :-P


	7. Chapter 7

One minute the path is clear ahead and the next it's blocked.

The only warning Carol has is a flash of movement in her peripheral vision and then the obstacle is in the path in front of them.

Still jumpy from the Walkers they'd just killed and knowing them not to have gotten far from the dump site, she imagines there can be only one thing standing before her. Rather than take the momentum of the adrenalin racing through her veins to fight, she skids to a stop, screams, drops her weapon and plows into the obstruction.

It curses in a blissfully familiar drawl as she begins to fall backward.

"What the-" Cassie exclaims as she skids into Carol's back.

The impact changes the course of her fall and she's knocked once more against Daryl's chest. With Cassie's weight and momentum behind her, the trio goes down in a tangle.

For a moment, they all lay there regaining breath; Cassie and Carol's lost in their running and Daryl's knocked out of him in the collision.

Carol recovers first and begins to shift, trying to leverage herself up enough to apologize to the man. Cassie decides to help by wriggling around until the teenager is able to shove her aside. As Carol thuds to the ground beside them, the girl exclaims and drops herself against Daryl's chest.

"Daryl! I was so worried about you!"

His eyes are slightly panicked as he looks down at the teenager trying to burrow into him as he lies sprawled and defenseless on the ground.

Carol almost laughs as he awkwardly pats Cassie's back while the girl babbles incoherently against him. The fact that the brat is doing what Carol herself would like to be doing; exclaiming her relief at Daryl's well-being from the comfort of the man's arms is enough to dampen any amusement, though. She pushes to her feet and calmly yanks the girl up off her man.

Green eyes glare at her for the move, but Daryl's blue gaze sparkles with gratitude and concern.

"What the hell y'all doing out here?"

Cassie's eyes narrow at the question and her mouth quirks in a grin that promises to make trouble.

"Carol had this silly idea that you'd be attacked by Walkers while dumping the hide since we were out here earlier dumping the innards."

Rather than incur any redneck wrath for the notion, Daryl stands and moves toward Carol with a crooked smile.

"Worried about me?"

"Always, when you're away from the group," she answers honestly, showing her heart in her gaze and words.

"Don't," he husks, nudging her chin with a rough hand when she shyly ducks from his return stare. "I take care of myself."

"Really?" she scoffs, unmindful of their observer as she raises her fingers to brush at the scar on his hairline before looking pointedly at his side.

"Still alive, aren't I?" he counters. "Plus, scars are sexy. You can't even keep your hands off 'em."

She grins up at him, huffing out a laugh at his playful words. His fingers flex on her chin, holding it firm and tilting her face upward as he slowly begins to bend toward her. Her grin slowly fades as she reads the intent in his gaze. The heat of his stare dries any moisture from her lips and she licks them in preparation of his kiss, sparking added fire in his eyes at the sight of her tongue.

"You should have seen us," Cassie announces, overly loud as she forces her scrawny little body between them.

Both adults jump at the intrusion and Daryl drops her chin like a hot potato before stumbling back from Carol.

"We killed six of the roamers. I got most of them, but Carol actually managed to off two all by herself," Cassie says, acting for all the world like she has no idea what she's just deliberately broken up.

"I just may manage to off you all by myself if you don't get your butt back to camp," Carol bends to hiss in the girl's ear.

"Walkers?" Daryl ignores the byplay between the females and snaps to attention at that. "Where?"

"Where we usually dump," the girl answers with a negligent shrug at his concern. "Where did you take the hide, by the way?"

"_Away_ from where we usually dump," he growls, bending to pick up the crossbow he'd dropped in their group tumble. "Haven't used that place in over a week now. Can't let these damn things pick up a routine, kid. They keep finding scraps in the same place and they'll start to wait there for scraps."

The words and tone work more effectively than any chastisement Carol could have imagined and Cassie's shoulders droop at the lecture. Fool that she is, Carol's first impulse is to hug the girl and chide the man for his abruptness.

"Were there more?" he demands before she can defend the teenager.

His no-nonsense, all business tone and tension stiffen Carol's spine.

"None that we saw, but we heard something coming before we ran," she answers slow and cautiously, picking up on his concern. "It was pretty much the reason why we ran into you."

"Well, congratulations, slugger," he drawls, bending to retrieve Cassie's fallen machete and return it to the girl. "Game's gone into an extra inning and you both better be ready to swing away."

Carol picks up her own weapon before he can get around to it and frowns at his words as he checks the bolt loaded in his bow before turning back toward the dumpsite.

"You want us to go back there?" she asks, eyes widening at the obvious conclusion.

"You gotta be shittin' me," Cassie exclaims as she finally catches up with the grownups' logic.

While it wouldn't be how she would have phrased it herself, the crude expression echoes Carol's own thoughts, so she again goes without attempting to correct the girl's use of profanity.

"Language," Daryl corrects the girl instead, surprising both females.

Cassie looks back at Carol with an expression that seems to ask if the woman's going to let the man talk to her like that and Carol can only shrug. She can only think that Daryl's heard her say it so often to Cassie that he just automatically did it upon hearing the child curse, but it was just so funny to have him do it with all the cussing they'd both heard from the hunter.

The hypocrisy is so typical of a parent with child that Carol finds it endearing and encouraging that he's making such gestures toward the girl without even realizing it himself. Cassie only sees the hypocrisy and Carol's lack of defense and the teenager scowls at them both before stomping past them both.

"Fine," she huffs, "you wanna get us all killed, let's get it over with."

Daryl calmly snags the girl by the back of her shirt and hauls her back before she can walk off in her sulk back to the dumpsite.

"You'll both stay behind me and the goal is to kill anything that should already be dead. There's no telling how many of these things are out here and all this racket's bound to be stirring them up. If you idjits had just stayed put at camp, everyone'd be fine, but now we've got to make sure there's nothing trying to follow you _back_ to camp."

She glares at him until he gives her a shake and she tugs free of his hold.

"Fine," she snarls, straightening her shirt. "Lead on, McGruff."

Carol snorts at the expression, surprised that the teenager is familiar with the crime solving dog used in so many public service announcements for children from decades ago.

Daryl gives them both a squinty eyed glare that wipes away Carol's budding grin and increases the glower on Cassie's face. With a series of hand gestures he indicates that they're to shut up, keep their eyes peeled for danger and follow close behind him.

As soon as he turns to lead them on this new mission, Cassie sticks out her tongue and mimics those gestures behind his back, throwing in some inappropriate use of her middle fingers. Carol tsks at the juvenile display and nudges the girl's shoulder to get her moving forward.

"Behave," she orders quietly, giving the teenager her sternest stare.

"I know," Cassie sighs, all signs of youth leaving her with the expulsion of breath. "Game faces. Time for another blood bath."

In the blink of an eye, the teenager goes from aggravated and defiant child to braced warrior. She shifts her hold on the machete so the blade is ready to lash out with maximum deadly force and she stiffens her spine to face any threat head on. Her eyes go cold and vigilant as she swivels her attention from left to right for any hint of approaching danger.

Carol frowns and mimics the girl's battle ready motions while thinking she preferred the child annoying and young. She promises herself that when they finish this, she'll have a very serious talk with Daryl about how they were going to proceed with the raising of this young lady in this frightful world that they now found themselves thrown together in.


	8. Chapter 8

"You do know I was being acerbic with the whole blood bath thing, right?"

Carol takes a moment from her frenzied attempt to get up from her back to glare at Cassie as the girl moves to stand over her.

"Acerbic?" she arches a brow at the teenager's choice of adjective.

"What," Cassie shifts to a defiant and defensive stance, "you think I'm just another pretty face? I'm totally smart. I almost won a spelling bee when I was in like the fifth grade with that word. Acerbic; showing criticism in a way that is clever and funny. I always like that word."

"Almost?" she scoffs again at this unlikely conversation.

"Like I'm supposed to know duteous is spelled with a frickin' 'e.' It's stupid because the word _means_ dutiful, d-u-t-_**i**_-f-u-l. The whole thing was rigged," the girl huffs in justification for this supposed slight before she flounces away.

Carol has no trouble whatsoever seeing how that one could have misspelled a word like duteous.

"Done playin' in that yet?"

She glares up at Daryl as he moves to stand over her and then very nearly growls at the man when his lip quirks to match the sparkle in his damned eyes.

To answer the question, she plants her elbows to leverage herself up and bites her lip to keep in any reaction to the squish and slide of gore beneath her sprawled form. She feels her expression twist into one of revulsion as she fights the desire to throw up again.

He has the nerve to chuckle at her predicament as her hand slips on entrails and she curls her fingers into the viscera; mightily tempted to fling it at him.

"Quit your wallowing in that junk," he tsks and extends his hand to hold her up.

"Touch me right now and you will be 'wallowing' right beside me, mister," she rejects the offer and focuses on getting herself up.

Her eyes back the words up with fiery intent until he withdraws the hand and steps away with his hands raised in surrender. The other side of his mouth quirks up for a full fledged grin as the twinkle of amusement increases in his gaze. She can tell he's biting the inside of his cheek to keep from openly laughing at her as Cassie has already done.

His gaze flicks to her hand twisting in the exposed innards of the corpse she had fallen on and he wisely wipes all traces of amusement from his expression before he turns away to stand beside Cassie nearby.

"Man, she is pissed," she hears Cassie stage whispering to the man.

Since she already has it in hand, she takes a portion of intestine and flings it across the distance. It strikes the girl rather unsatisfactorily on the leg, but Cassie's freak out to the bit of gore makes up for some of her disappointment at not having hit a bit of flesh on her target

Daryl whips a quick glance over his shoulder like he might actually chastise her for the childish action and she matches the look with a speaking thrust of her hand back into the corpse for another handful of the revolting gore.

"This would probably be a good time to shut up, kid," he stage whispers to Cassie as he turns back to watching the girl hop around in circles in a wasted attempt to get the blood and guts off her jeans without actually touching it.

If anything about this whole scene were funny, Carol would be rolling on the ground laughing at that hissy fit, but she is done with rolling and there is _nothing_ funny about _any_ of this.

With her audience distracted, Carol sucks it up and gets down to removing herself from the mess she's mired in.

Cassie is to blame for this and Carol feels justified in placing blame for everything wrong in the world at the girl's feet in light of her current situation.

Once they'd cleared the area of Walkers, and there had been Walkers at the site, the girl had looked around at the carnage before swinging around with a triumphant shout. She'd bumped right into Carol and knocked the woman flat on her ass. The landing had been cushioned by the very cushiony gut of an obese zombie they'd slain and that death bloated gut had immediately split open at the force of the impact.

She's never imagined what it would be like to roll around on the remains of a human, but if she had she would have imagined the body and blood to have some remaining warmth to it from the life that had passed.

It was not so with the corpse she fell upon.

She has no words to describe what the congealed blood and rotting organs felt like as it spread over her flesh. The trauma would not soon be forgotten and she would like very much to scrub off every layer of skin she currently has; as soon as she can stop slipping on the remains to get a good brace on the actual ground to push herself up.

When it finally becomes evident that she's going to continue struggling like a turtle stuck on its back unless she accepts a hand up she draws a deep breath, clenches her eyes shut then forces herself to roll over in the remains. The body squishes beneath her and parts immediately ooze and cling to parts of her that she can't allow herself to think about as she pushes to all fours and scrabbles away from the remains.

Once the nice, normal forest floor is beneath her again she leaps to her feet and expels the breath from her lungs. Her eyes open to look down at her bloodstained clothing and covered flesh then she looks again at the mangled body.

"Oh, God," she gulps, covering her mouth instinctively against the urge to vomit.

The smell of death on her hand hits her like a fist and she losses it again.

She vows to become a vegetarian and never eat red meat again.

Her primary vow to fulfill at the moment though is to kill Cassandra "Lunatic Imp of Satan" Davies.

"Oh my God, if I had a camera," the girl is cackling nearby. "Your face…oh, if you could see your face!"

She feels a growl in her throat as her eyes lock on the child with murderous intent, but the girl only whoops it up more when Carol thoughtlessly swipes at her mouth with the back of her hand to wipe away any traces of her having just thrown up.

"Girlie," Daryl says softly, wisely moving to place himself between the woman and teenager, "I don't much care for spelling bees and shit, but if you really do have half a brain in your head you'd best be knocking off that hyena mating call you call a laugh and start running about now."

The laughing slows at the warning as the Cassie leans to look around the protection of the man's back.

"So you're saying I should refrain from mentioning how Carrie was a pretty good movie from back in your alls' day and that looks way grosser than pig's blood?" the little bitch just can't resist tweaking the tail of the bull for the added threat of violent death. "Do you feel like Carrie right now, because the similarity is uncanny. I can practically hear that weird assed Jesus freak mom doing the whole 'they're all gonna laugh at you' schtick," the girl laughs, Carol glares retaliation to come. "You're totally trying to kill me with your mind right now!"

"Oh no," Carol straightens, eyes locked with the child's, "I'm going to use my hands for this."

She locates her fallen machete on the ground and moves to pick it up with calm, deliberate motions.

"Aw, come on, I'm just playing with you," the girl wheedles. "We kicked some serious zombie ass here; you should be relieved instead of being such a stick in the mud."

"Does this," Carol grips the handle of the machete in a white knuckled fist as she waves a hand at herself, "look like _**mud**_ to you?"

Cassie's green eyes blink as the smile finally starts to falter on her face. She looks toward Daryl, finds him watching the woman with a caution and preparedness that finally forces it into the little twit's obviously damaged head that Carol is not playing.

"Maybe we should get back to camp," the girl says cautiously while moving closer to the man's protective back, "you can get washed up and-"

"How have you survived this long without listening when someone tells you to shut up?" Daryl sighs, giving the girl an exasperated glare over his shoulder.

"You didn't tell me to shut up, you told me to stop laughing," the teenager argues because she's defective that way. "Which," her tone sharpens as she latches on a new topic with her ADHD brain, "sounds nothing like a hyena. I have a melodious laugh."

"Really?" Carol interjects to get the child's attention back on track. "How's your screaming?"

Their eyes meet as she takes a single step forward, causing Cassie's eyes to widen in surprise and concern as she wraps a hand around Daryl's biceps.

"You're not going to let her do anything to me, are you?" she is heard to whisper to the man as Carol takes another slow and deliberate step forward with weapon in blood covered hand.

"Warned you to run. Tried to give ya a head start," he flicks a glance at the girl. "Figure I done my part," he gives Carol a grin and wink before unwrapping the girl's clinging fingers from his arm. "You're on your own with this one."

Carol's lips curl into a malicious parody of a grin as the man nimbly steps aside to clear the way to the teenager.

For a moment, Cassie stands there frozen like a deer caught in the headlights of a rapidly approaching semi. Her eyes dart from the man to the woman and back before Carol takes another step forward and snaps a twig under her foot.

"Fucking turncoat," the girl snaps a glare at Daryl before turning tail and finally running with the minimal lick of sense God seems to have given her.

"You gonna use that?" Daryl stalls her as she tightens her grip on the machete and prepares to give chase.

"To beat that child's ass until she can't sit until age thirty," Carol all but snarls, looking at him and daring him to stop her.

He again steps back from her with his hands raised to show he'll be making no moves against her in Carol's current state of mind.

"Make sure you get her pinned real good," he offers, "she's a biter and scratcher."

She gives him a nod of agreement with the advice and turns to begin running back to camp; where the girl thought she could escape her punishment among the safety of the group.

"Damn," she hears him expel before she gets out of hearing range, "would be nice to have a camera for this."


	9. Chapter 9

When Cassie runs into the camp at full speed looking over her shoulder as if chased by the hounds of hell it draws the attention of the group gathering for the evening meal as the day wanes.

She trips over Carl as he sits harmlessly against a tree near the campfire. The boy's legs get tangled with the girl's feet and the kids roll hard to the ground.

Carol watches with no lessening of her fury as she continues to stalk after the teenager.

Every adult in the camp slowly moves to stand as they catch sight of the machete wielding woman dripping gore as she moves closer to the sprawled girl.

"Oh, shit," Cassie curses, pushing at Carl until she gets free of his tangling limbs. "She's trying to kill me!"

"What'd you do this time?"

The question is asked simultaneously by everyone in the group with varying levels of amusement and exasperation.

"The fuck?" Cassie exclaims as she scrambles to her feet to look at the group with injured innocence.

"Language," Andrea, Dale and Rick all chime at the word and Carol has never loved these people more than she does in that moment as the girl's jaw drops at _that_ being all the help or attention she seems to be getting from the grown-ups.

"She is trying to _kill __**me**_," the girl shrieks with a stamp of her foot.

"With good reason by the look of it," Shane snorts out a laugh, earning glares from both females as his humor is not appreciated.

The man just smiles at Cassie's anger suddenly aimed at him, but he has the sense to erase all traces of amusement from his expression in the face of Carol's wrathful gaze turned upon him. As Daryl had done, Shane raises his hands in surrender and backs away from the crazy woman with a weapon.

Seeing no help from the group, Cassie takes advantage of Carol's momentary distraction with the officer and bolts for the RV. The door to the Winnebago slams shut and no one has to hear the lock click to know the teenager has secured herself in the vehicle.

"That little bitch," Carol takes a step toward the RV before whipping her head around to locate the owner. "Dale-"

"Sorry, Carol," the man raises his own hands in a peaceful gesture, eyebrows jumping as he quickly answers before she can even complete the thought, "I keep them in the ignition in case we have to move quickly."

"Shit," she flings the machete down and glares at the vehicle in disgust; uncaring of her own language in light of the situation.

"Aw, hell," T-Dog moves forward at the same time; peering cautiously in a window, "you don't think that little psycho would boost your ride, do you?"

No one thinks it as they suddenly _know _what the teenager will likely do once she sees the keys. They can't see any sign of her in the Winnebago and everyone converges on it for a better look.

"I've got this," Dale moves quickly to pop the hood and disconnect the battery to prevent the vehicle from moving.

"I would have brought it back as soon as she cooled down," the girl springs up from her hiding place to settle in the driver's seat with a pout, causing Glenn to fall back with a yelp as he'd just grabbed hold of the side mirror to pull himself up to look in the cab of the RV. "She's crazed!"

"Yeah," the Korean mumbles as he rises from the ground brushing at the seat of his pants, "_Carol's_ the crazy one."

"She looks to be calming down to me," Rick says to the girl while ignoring Glenn with a quirk to his lips. "Why don't you come out so we can discuss whatever's happened?"

"Get bent," the teen returns defiantly before abandoning her position behind the wheel to move somewhere else in the camper.

Carl laughs at the words until he realizes both his parents are suddenly focused on him and he lowers his attention to the ground with a faint blush.

"I would ask what happened, but explanations can wait," Andrea moves forward with a cringing expression. "You really need a bath."

Carol levels a glare at the 'helpful' woman and says, deadpan, "But I just had one yesterday."

"Take it she isn't dead," Daryl finally joins them after his apparent leisure walk back to the camp.

"Locked herself inside," Carol's teeth grind as she glares again at the RV.

"Smart," the man snorts with a nod.

She turns slowly to stare at him as her hands move to her hips.

"Whose side are you on?" she demands.

"You gotta admit, she thinks well on her feet," he defends against the heated look aimed at him.

Carol concedes no such thing and thinks the machete's probably feeling pretty rejected there on the ground; she really shouldn't have flung it aside like she had. Especially when it would be so useful in helping Daryl to realize that now is not the time to admire Cassie for her survival instincts when his own are so clearly lacking when it came to dealing with a furious female.

Glenn swoops in from out of nowhere to grab the weapon up before she can reach for it. The young man blushes guiltily when he finds himself pinned down by her icy blue eyes.

"I'll just…I thought...I'm just," he stammers and crabwalks out of range, "I'll get this cleaned up for you."

"Wanna talk about it?" Rick asks in an attempt to defuse the situation.

"I want," she heaves a sigh and drops her head to look at herself in disgust, "to burn these clothes and boil myself in soap until my skin melts off to take this stuff with it."

"I'll get you a change of clothes," Andrea snaps into action to go to Carol's tent and collect said items.

"I'll get the soap," Lori eyes the Winnebago where they keep most of their supplies then moves to her own tent where she's apparently hoarding some necessities.

"Won't be boiling, but I'll walk you to the creek to start washing up," Shane steps forward to offer helpfully.

The offer is slightly surprising and as she pauses to consider her response Daryl moves to cut the other man off.

"_I_ got her back," he states, low and clear with a blade of warning cased in his drawl.

"That seems to be working real well," Shane scoffs with a pointed glance at the mess she currently is.

She moves to separate the before the two men can come to blows and before she allows herself to enjoy the notion of them fighting over her for whatever reasons they had to puff up their chests.

"Thank you for the offer, Shane," she gives him a smile then turns to Daryl. "Can you carry those," she indicates the folded change of clothes Andrea has returned with, "I don't want to touch anything until this stuff is off me."

He gives Shane a speaking glare before moving to take the clothes with as much machismo as a man can muster when doing a woman's bidding rather than obeying the manlier urge to beat something up.

"Here," Lori adds a new bar of soap, towel and bottle of shampoo to the pile.

He accepts them with a nod of thanks then looks to Carol to silently urge her into motion.

"If she slithers out," she gives a pointed look at the RV, "sit on her," she aims the direction at T-Dog, "cuff her," to Rick, "shoot her," Andrea accepts the instruction with a grin and nod, "do not let her leave this camp."

All heads in the group bob in agreement of the decree and she sets off toward the creek confident in their compliance.


	10. Chapter 10

They quietly walk the worn path from camp to the deep spot in the little river nearby where they went to bathe on the warmer days.

Daryl stops at the edge of the water once they arrive at it, but Carol gets right on going until her filthy form is submerged in the liquid.

It's cold from the coming of night and she gasps as her skin draws tight against the sudden chill, but she doesn't regret a thing as the slow current begins to loosen the bits of flesh clinging to her.

"That's one way to do it," she hears Daryl chuckle from the bank as her head rises above the water again after she dunked it under.

She turns toward him, letting the water cool some of her temper.

"That child is a menace."

"What're you looking at me for?" he snaps defensively at the look she gives him with the words. "She ain't mine."

"Technically, legally and biologically, no, she isn't," Carol sighs, scrubbing at her skin as she tries to plot the best course for this much needed discussion. "But she doesn't have anyone else now and since you're the one that saved her, you're the one she looks to now."

"Jesus," he sat down on the ground with an expression of disgust on his face, "you're talking like her now."

Carol's hands still at that allegation and she looks at him with narrowing eyes.

"Hells bells, woman," he scrambles quickly back to his feet at the shower of water she sends toward him with a vicious swipe of her arm across the surface of the river, "acting like her too now."

"I am not," she begins to argue contrary to her actions as she removes a waterlogged shoe and hurls it in his direction, "anything like your demented little darling."

"Will you stop," he bats away the second shoe with an irritated look as he beats a hasty retreat to a nearby tree. "She is not _**mine.**_"

"_She_ is _**your**_ responsibility," she wades to the shore to collect the bar of soap from where he dropped the supplies.

He says nothing in response to the charge and she begins to scrub herself, clothing and all, with the soap to work up a lather.

"She's been through a gauntlet and we've giving her all the leeway for it that we can afford to. It's time to get her past the grief and realizing that she has to be strong and grow up now."

"Hell," she turns to watch him slowly poke out from behind his tree then move to settle back on the bank, "that girl's more mature than I am most days."

Not about to touch on that notion with a ten foot pole, Carol just snorts out a laugh.

"She has her moments, but they're few and grower further between," she faces him with her arms widespread. "She's a human wrecking ball; leaving nothing but chaos in _my _path. Look at this!" she gestures at her ruined clothing and still bloody skin.

He looks, eyes skimming over her once then returning to her chest with a look that makes her suddenly away of her nipples hardened by the cold water. He licks his lips after a moment then looks away while scratching at the side of his neck and she shivers at nothing to do with the cold water.

"This is just the last straw for me dealing with her," she forces her mind to stay on point and crosses her arms across her chest.

"Then don't," he huffs, dropping his hand to slap against the ground. "She's not your problem."

"She is not a _problem_," she huffs back, giving him a wounded glance at the notion. "She's a traumatized child and she needs all the help she can get in this horrible place."

He groans and drops his head forward to rub at his forehead as if he's suddenly beset with a severe migraine.

"I was wrong," he sighs, "I understand Cassie better when she rants."

With her jaw dropping at _that_, Carol reacts in her current agitated state by whipping the shirt off her back to ball up and throw at his head.

It hits his up drawn knee with a feeble thwap then plops to the ground.

"What do you want from me?" he hurls the words at her along with the shirt after he swipes it up in an angry motion.

It hits _her_ head and she sputters at the splash of sudsy wetness against her face.

_Of course,_ she thinks with disdain as the shirt splats to the water and begins to float away, _he never misses._

"It's not about what _I __**want**_," she sighs and rubs at her own head as it begins to hurt from the strain of this topic. "It's about what Cassie needs."

"What she _needs_ is that ass whoopin' you had planned before she turned tail and hid."

"How often does beating a child usually work?" she returns somberly, drawing attention to both their scars.

"We got out ok," he met her eyes then looked away. "Ain't saying we abuse the brat, just gotta knock some sense into her. Kid don't listen."

"She does," Carol points out, "to _you."_

He snorts then shakes his head in disagreement of that statement.

"Daryl Dixon, you are that girl's hero in every way that means anything in this world and she needs you now to step up and help her adjust," she stares at him, hands on hips as she tries to force the knowledge into his selectively thick skull.

"I-" his eyes sharpen and she knows the exact moment he realizes she's standing there; waist deep in water and arguing with him while completely topless.

It's pretty much the same moment that she realizes it herself.

Mortified and blushing more than she has since losing her virginity; she ducks down until the water is up to her chin and looks around frantically for her discarded shirt. She spots it well on its way down the river and nearly out of sight.

Her bar of soap is floating toward a similar fate and she looks at her empty hands in surprise before giving chase to the precious and increasingly rare commodity.

She rushes after it with a combination of swimming and running until she's able to swipe the dissolving bar from the water with a triumphant shout. She turns toward the bank to share her achievement with Daryl and finds the current to have carried her several yards from where she had started and she catches movement in the woods along the river, coming toward her.

It takes her a minute to realize the movement is too rapid to be Walkers and Daryl breaks into the open to relax the rest of her instinctual fears of the damned things that hid in these woods.

He sees her treading water, but no longer going with the flow of the river and moves to the edge of the bank to glare down at her.

"You don't ever just bolt on me like that again," he snaps with an honest to God wag of his finger in her direction as he slings his armed crossbow over his shoulder to rest against his back.

"I got the soap," she offers feebly with a wave of the hand holding the evidence of her excuse.

"I outta show you what happens when you drop that shit in a prison shower," he huffs. "You finished now?"

He looks like he's not going to give her any choice of answering no and opting to stay in the water, but she grins with the knowledge that his position on the bank is too high for her to climb to with there being nothing for her to actually _climb _to get to him and there being no way for him to scoop her out without falling _in_ in the process.

"I still feel that stuff all over me; clinging and oozing and practically crawling," she confesses with a shiver of revulsion and sudden cold as a breeze cuts through the area. "I'm not getting out of here until this soap," she looks as said soap, "or this skin," she looks at said skin and bites back a grin when he looks at that as well, "is all gone," she concludes.

He glares around them; listens intently for several minutes then expels a resigned sigh.

"Fine, but get your ass back up where you were," he orders before moving to stalk back into the woods with the clear intent of returning to his previous perch on the bank to await her return to where he could keep an eye on her.

Moving against the current makes her trip back much slower and difficult that the float down river. The weight of the gently flowing water pushed at her legs with surprising resistance at every step she took.

Her pants are an unnecessary hindrance considering the unlikelihood of her ever wanting to wear them again after this day even if they weren't forever stained with blood; so she rolls to her back for a moment to unfasten the capris and shove them past her hips. Once she has them lowered she begins a backstroke upriver, using the kicks to free her legs from the tangle of wet material to help propel her along against the current.

There's something decadent and taboo for her to be swimming along in the nude with the fading sunlight peering down on her like a pervert through the canopy of trees. She thinks of Daryl seeing her; watching her like this and smiles, flipping to swim with a little more force toward where he waited.

As soon as she spots him on the bank; watching the water for her return, she drops her feet back to the riverbed and resumes the struggle to walk against the current until she's back where she'd started.

He doesn't question her delay in getting back after having seen the effort it takes her cross that short distance.

The area is quiet; but peacefully so with only the sounds of the river to be heard around them.

She realizes that they are finally; completely and utterly alone.

She remembers the last time they had been in this spot together; their positions reversed with him in the water and her trying to get up the nerve to join him before he'd caught Cassie spying on him and Carol had had to hide in the trees so he wouldn't think; _know_ that she had been there watching too.

"Daryl," she says, thinking of what she'd wanted them to have done then had the girl not been present; what they _can do_ now with the teenager safely locked by her own actions in the Winnebago back at camp.

He acknowledges her prompt with a jerk of his chin to indicate he was listening for the rest of it, his eyes moving briefly over her flesh above the waterline before he looked away; out of respect she hopes and is touched by the possible chivalry.

"I was sprawled in that stuff for so long it feels like the blood is sinking into me," she turns her back to him and casts a coy glance over her shoulder, making a play to test the chivalrous theory. "Can you scrub my back for me? I have to know that it's all washed away," she isn't lying in that sentiment, her skin truly did crawl at the thought of any trace of that corpse lingering on her.

She faces forward again and holds her breath to wait for his response.

She's on the verge of losing consciousness from oxygen deprivation to the brain by the time she finally feels the ripples of him finally entering the water behind her. She tries to breathe normally again like she hasn't been holding it in like an adolescent only to have the rhythm disrupted again when he suddenly places his left hand on her shoulder and extends his right arm forward to hold out his hand, palm up and waiting.

"Soap," he prompts when she fails to immediately deposit the bar in his waiting hand.

She fumbles with the slick item in transferring it to his grasp and watches it splat into the river. His hand tightens on her shoulder as he bends quickly forward to grab the soap before it can float away again.

He scoops the item up from the water and straightens slowly to stand upright again at her back. His hold on her shoulder doesn't ease, if anything, it grows tighter.

"Carol," he husks very carefully against the back of her head, "where are your pants?"

She casts a glance downriver and sees the garment in question bobbing along the current as her shirt had done.

"And how exactly did they get there?" he asks, having followed her gaze to see the answer to his first question.

"I took them off," she replies, not really knowing if she felt like a child being interrogated or more like an adult patiently addressing the curious demands of a child. Either scenario is just wrong in her head given she wants them to be rolling around together on the bank like Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr tangled in the surf in _From Here To Eternity_. "You're not wearing yours either," she accuses at the feel of his bare legs against her own.

"Doesn't make sense to get everything wet," he explains like it's really necessary, "I've still got my shorts on."

He presses his forehead against the nape of her neck as he drags the bar of soap up her thigh while his fingers skim over her bare flesh from knee to waist.

"Where are your panties?"

She feels the press of hardened flesh against her backside and smiles as satisfaction spreads at the success of her plan to lure him in to frolic.

"Guess they got tangled in the pants," she turns in his hold with a careless shrug. "You know how hard it is to get out of wet clothing."

She looks briefly into his eyes then drops her gaze to the fingers of her hand beneath the water as she skim across the elasticized waistband of his boxers.

"It feels pretty liberating to be completely naked in here," she confesses.

"Temptress," he chokes out before skittering back then spinning her back around. "What happened to your having to get this crud off your back?"

His hands begin to move briskly over her back from the nape of her neck to the dip of her spine as her torso curves below the surface of the water.

"Anything to get your hands on me," she sighs at his hands on her even with the simple intent to clean her.

"I'm trying to be good here, woman," he drawls against the back of her head as her words still the motion of his hands on her body.

"What kind of good?" she turns toward him again to challenge. "And why they hell should we behave if you're defining that as us not going further than this?"

She wraps her hand around the back of his neck and pulls his mouth down to hers for a quick, sloppy kiss.

"You've been through so much lately -" he attempts when they separate for breath.

"That's right, Daryl," she looks determinedly into his eyes, "I've been _through_ it. Give me something good to get on with."

He resists her for a moment then his eyes close and his lips move quietly as if he's uttering a prayer before he crushes his mouth to hers and wraps her tightly in his arms. The buoyancy of the water helps her lift her legs to wrap around his waist with him only staggering for a moment to brace and balance himself with her added wait to fully support.

All she can think is that they're _finally _going to do _**it**_ and she thinks for a moment that she's said the thought aloud before it sinks in that Daryl's lips are still on hers and the words; a variation of her thought had been spoken by a familiar young male voice nearby.

"_Are they really going to do __**it**__ right there in the water?"_

She can tell that the words have sunk into Daryl's fogged brain at the same moment as his body goes still and his head slowly lifts from hers.

"Carl?" he barks out.

Her eyes detect movement on a rock outcropping a few feet up river and she slowly unwinds her legs from Daryl's waist.

"CASSANDRA!" she prepares to turn in confrontational stance to face the bane of her existence with her hands upon her hips, but Daryl stops her with a quick, hard grip to keep her pressed against his chest.

"Don't stop you try and stop me," she glares at him for the delay, "we agreed she has it coming."

"Actually," he has the nerve to point out, "_I_ said she should get that ass whoopin' and you seemed to think she could be magically made sane with a few words from me. But that's not-"

"Fine," she tries to twist free of his grasp, "so I agree with _you_ now. Let me go so I can-"

"You're aked-nay," he hisses in her ear with his hands fighting her every attempt to break away.

The pig Latin is something she'll laugh about later, she's sure, if she ever comes out of the hole she determines in that moment that she must find to crawl into.

At this point they can both hear the kids scampering away with whatever glimmer of sense that hadn't been in existence between them before their bright idea to track them down at the river.

Carol draws in a slow breath at the sound of their running feet gets further away.

"Can I get dressed now and then go kill her?" she tips her head back to ask.

"No," he drops a quick kiss to her lips before releasing her to splash to the bank, "_you_ were right. The girl's my responsibility," he begins to angrily thrust limbs into his clothing while Carol moves to dress and argue with whatever he says next, "_I_ get to kill her."

Carol doesn't feel a need to argue with _that_ as they rush to cover themselves as much as decency demands before they grab up their things to hurry along the path back to camp without even bothering to put on their shoes.

* * *

><p>AN: I've been on a tear with this series today and have what will be the last 2 chapters waiting a few quick tweaks before I upload them to complete the series. Gotta get to bed for work in the morning, though, so those tweaks have to wait a few days.


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